


Jonathon Lily

by Thimblerig



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cast Herd, Flying Machines, Gen, Implied Relationships, Intrigue, Low Magic, Renaissance Punk, Some Grisly Bits, switched at birth - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-18 15:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12390597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Knowledge is like a river: when it floods out of season it can kill. A young scholar's drive to discover where he came from leads him into some murderous tangles.





	1. In Which Jonathon Lily Reads A Letter.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DaisyNinjaGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/gifts).



I am not your father.

You have long known this, my dear Jonathon: a curve-backed old gnome of a scholar is nothing like you, my tall shadow-eyed fellow. Except in shared learning, perhaps. And in the heart.

But knowledge is like the great river Camber: it grows as it travels and it is fed from strange sources. And - like the Camber - however useful it might be for commerce or to turn a mill wheel, when it floods out of season it is dangerous. I write you this now, Jonathon, that you may be prepared in case of flood. 

Twenty years ago I was involved in the Troubles, down in Camuth. Even then I knew better. A flare-up of reckless students congregating in the Duke's Benefice Library and the wine bars on Caramel Street, who thought they understood the nature of politics and the Rights of Humanity, combined with the yearly Guild disputes and (I still believe) a handful of agents provocateur from the Cities Up-River - became a nightmare of panic, hypocrisy, treason, murder. I thought I knew better. All I did was write a pamphlet contrasting Classical ethics with our own. But it was enough.

I was kept under the Duke's Alta Fortress with many other people, most of them less deserving than myself, in a stone room buried under the ground in the muck, and the dank and the dark. Among our number were several women, and as it happened two were gravid. One was a pale-haired witch whose name we never knew; not even I could find a language in common with her. The other - the other was very beautiful and very fierce. I fancy that she knew the game she was caught in, had chosen it, and considered our predicament only a bad fall of the dice or the result of a careless play at tiles. Forgive me, Jonathon. I think I loved her.

The conditions were terrible, Jonathon, and you will not be surprised to learn that, when they gave birth within hours of each other, one of them did not survive, and neither did her child. Soon after, half of us were taken away for public execution, in the square in front of the Fortress, or so I heard. The living mother was one of them, but she left her child and took the other into that fatal daylight. I am told she brandished the poor dead creature in front of the Duke when it was her turn on the gallows, dangling it by one ankle and letting it drop before they tightened the noose about her neck. A fierce, terrible woman, that. And I loved her.

Which left us with you. For a quiet scholar and translator who never meant any harm, I have spent far too many of my days and nights in durance. For my advice, it is not just the privation that will do one ill, it is the sense of powerlessness, an uncertainty about one's own fate. I have found it salutary, when in a prison, to have something to do, whether it is a text to translate, or a method of escape to work on or, best, something to nurture. We had _you,_ a hobby, if you will, or a fragile line, a clew that we held tightly in that maze of despair that might return us, in time, to sanity.

We fed you with milk from the dead woman's breast, while it lasted, and chewed the carrion and mold-ridden bread they supplied us into mush that you could swallow. You thrived on it, lad, for the weeks and months that we were kept in that small room. We called you the Lily, for the flower that grows in muck yet is beautiful and pure. And when finally we were led outside, where the winter sun blinded us anew and the wind - a mere breeze, surely - buffeted us almost off our feet as we stood blinking in the square where once they had killed some of our number, you were a large infant that we could barely carry. We stood tight as a tied bundle of sticks to keep you hidden from view, and wrapped your eyes in cloth to guard you from the brightness. The soldiery in dark blue coats garnished with silver buttons stood in ranks about us. Someone barked an order. And then, Jonathon, they let us all go. The Duke's soldiers simply turned aside and marched back into the Fortress, and we were left to wander, inconnu, into the city. Somehow we, who had stayed tight together so long, broke into bits and clumps as we wandered the quiet streets. Hardly a body was about, or perhaps they thought us lepers and so avoided us. It was lonely.

I found myself on a bridge over one of the canals that lead into the Camber. It was cold. A tall woman was standing beside me, stern in her high-necked dress and her hair caught up in jet-beaded pins. "I am hoping the father married thee good and proper," she said. Bewildered I turned towards her, holding the child, holding you. She tried to take you but I clutched at you and you started wailing and hiccuping until she stopped and sighed, and took my shoulder instead to lead me along. It was some time before I realised that this importunate stranger was my old housekeeper, Meren Hus'f, a woman with a vile sense of humour and a high, dark house on the Bank.

We stayed in that house for several years, Jonathon, in the company of that good woman; she fed us and nursed us through several high fevers as we purged ourselves of the filth of the cell. It was there we fitted you with your first pair of shaded spectacles, and where, after some time, I nerved myself to set a freshly sharpened quill into a bottle of ink. Some time after that, Jonathon, I began to write again. This may surprise you, considering my current habits, but it came hard. Still, I needed to repay Meren Hus'f for her hospitality in some wise, and no other trade came to my hand except begging. I shied away from the respectable, erudite work that had cause me so much trouble, and instead worked on scurrilous songs and humorous works for the stage. "The Small-Breasted Women of Falun" is one of mine under another name, as is that dreadful play "Priapus Principio". (So you see, Jonathon, when I critiqued your own efforts for the stage, I knew well the matter of my discourse. I am sorry the form my advice took led you to think I was merely… strait-laced.)

The smut that I wrote, as it happens, found favour with the rarely washed crowds that swarm the canals and, shortly after you began walking I had earned enough for passage Up River, which I took as soon as I could. Our life since then is as you remember it - an itinerant existence but a happy one up and down the Cam, and in the mountains, and through far Outremer. And now, Jonathon, I am ever so much older than I thought I would be. I wonder often if I should burn this letter before you read it, and let you live unhampered by the ties of the past. Yet, we never know when the river will break its banks. It is best to be prepared for the worst. I shall keep this letter and, when you are ready, I shall give it to you or perhaps, when my bones finish turning into powder and my lungs to fluid, you shall find it, being as ready as you shall ever be, o son of my heart.

The distillation of this letter is in two parts. For the first, if you are ever in need then you may call on your many godparents, some of whom are surely still alive: Thrip o'Morgan, Gareth Turner, Androby Hus'f, Cam and Sal of Caramel Street, the Grimmer family from Up-River, the Camuth branch of the Paper Guild, Zyin Lock, and the two missionaries from Outremer, Feather-Hat and Steady-Legs, are all alive as I write this. And of course, Meren Hus’f, if she still lives.

For the second, Jonathon, my Jonathon, my very dear boy, I feel that you should consider very carefully ever letting a body know that your mother was the Duke of Camuth's first wife.

Your loving father in every way that matters,

Nicodemus

**

Jonathon laid the letter down on the window's sandstone ledge, its paper oatmeal coloured against the tan stone, and half in sunlight. His eyes ached from the glare and he rubbed them with balled up fists before squinting out at the mountain peaks in serried spikes falling down and away. Massaging his scalp through sandy hair, he smoothed his wheat-coloured broad-cloth coat, and drew deep slow breaths for two minutes, before putting his dark spectacles on, opening his eyes, and pursing his lips, finally turning back to the bed behind him.

Surrounded by cream linen as a sea skerry is surrounded by the rapidly flooding tide lay Nicodemus Dot'ri, still breathing in laboured rasps. The old man's eyes opened, blinked, stayed open. His knobbly, bird-claw hand moved slightly. "J-J-Jon'thon," he slurred.

"I'm here, father," the young man said, sitting back on the straight wooden chair by the bed. He dipped a clean bit of cloth into the water jug, dabbed it on the old man's lips, and squeezed a little water into his mouth.

"J-Jon'thon," Nicodemus said again. "Impor'tant. You must know. Parents. Yours." His hand waved again and Jonathon took it carefully in his own. "Your muzzer, Jon'thon, princess from Far Outr'mer. Soon, mus' go back, take up feathered diadem of, of authority."

Jonathon nodded. "Yes, father. I will do that."

"Jon'thon," the old man slurred. "Something should know. 'M'not really y'r dad. Wished I was. Good boy you are. Found y'in prop box, back of theatre one day. Keep writing th'plays, lad - 'sin your blood."

"Yes, father."

"Jon'thon, th'spies from Cities Up-River coming. Want t', want t'..."

"I'm listening, father..."

_End of Chapter One_


	2. Which Partly Takes Place In Cafes

He sat in a room in the side of the mountain, sipping coffee. Through the high crystal window he could see spring melt-water tumbling in streams and gushes down the crags, lifting the last of the snow from the rough rock and twiggy branches. Tiny birds hopped and darted through the water and under the bridges strung from crag to crag. As he watched, a line of porters in heavy fur coats humped heavy packs across a swaying bridge. All of the scene was faintly blue. He sipped more of his coffee, swirling the black liquid around the cup. He inhaled the steam and considered the texture of the cup through his fingers – smooth and thrown very elegantly, but with the faint grainy texture they liked so much here in the City of Ocks, as Up River as ever could be. He'd heard that the potters imported a particular grade of sand all the way from Outremer to make these cups. Jonathon swallowed the last of his coffee and laid his bills out on the table to peruse them.

By the end of it, he had cause to thank his great fortune: the great gift of a marvellous clock from the Duke of Ocks, or rather, the money he would get from selling it, would almost certainly cover the costs of his father's hospice. Perhaps there would be enough for the funeral also. At the sound of footsteps behind him, he swept the bills back into their leather case and laid it by his feet.

"It is always a pleasure to see a young person who is punctual," said the man behind him, his voice low and pleasant. He swept his coat-tails behind him and sat, deftly, across from Jonathon, elegant from his white-streaked hair and aquiline nose to his narrow suede boots. He lacked Jonathon’s height, as most did in the city. One drooping wave of his hand brought a cheerful brown-eyed woman with a silver coffee-pot on a tray, and fresh cups, and cream. He – the broker of _objets d'art_ Faziraloemin – drizzled a small drop of expensive cream into his cup and stirred it negligently. "This is almost my favourite place to partake of refreshments," he said, "the view is simply marvellous. Not the best in Ocks, I must admit - that is in the Ducal palace in the horn at the top, but still very fine. And much warmer," he added, in an undertone but smiling.

Jonathon snagged one of the honey biscuits and bit into it, brushing at the crumbs as it shattered in his mouth and, butter-laden, dissolved in a brief, joyous burst of sweetness. He paused, wondering how to continue the conversation. Finally, he swallowed the last crumbs of the biscuit, took a breath, and -

"What have you brought me, dear boy?" Faziraloemin asked, still smiling. Jonathon shrugged, and opened his leather satchel. He drew out the clock, wrapped in soft white line, and placed the fragile thing on the table, gently drawing the wrappings away so that it stood on three arched legs between them, a glory in silver and painstaking enamel-work. The both of them could hear its tiny, rapid ticking. "Extraodinary!" Faziraloemin breathed. "You do realise that this is part of a set, do you not? Old Makhem Hora's last work. If I am not mistaken, this is the eleventh: As Stars In the Night Cast Down Glory. The depth of colour alone is stunning – how many layers did the old woman lay down to get that effect, that dark midnight blue that's almost black and yet, and yet we know, we sense somehow the burning effulgence behind the darkness. But here, boy, you can hardly see your own hands in those dark glasses, take them off and appreciate this clock for what it is..."

Jonathon hesitated. The art dealer waited, saying nothing more until the younger man removed his spectacles and tucked them in one pocket, feeling very much like a mole as he blinked his watering eyes. There was indeed a deeper wash of colour in the clock without his tinted glasses in the way, and Faziraloemin's dark coat revealed itself to be a dark burgundy somewhat reminiscent of drying blood. The art dealer smiled like a cat and prodded the catch of the clock with one careful finger; the little door swung open revealing intricate, tiny wheels and gears whirring away without flaw or pause. Jonathon refused to rub his eyes or hunch over and peer at the inner workings in front of this man, but the water still leaked out of the corners of his eyes and down his face, leaving little salty trails. The corners of Faziraloemin's mouth quirked downwards in an appearance of sorrow. "Oh, my dear Jonathon, this must be a terrible time for you."

"Not at all," he responded blandly. "I've waited years for the old man to doff his hat. And now all his belongings are mine; I weep for joy. Ha ha, I must celebrate." He snagged another honey biscuit and bit into it. This one disintegrated all over his hands and he was busy for some time with a napkin. "And of course," Jonathon continued, "I've inherited his translating contracts. Who would have thought that century-old alchemical treatises from the back country could be so fascinating to the aristocracy. They just can't get enough of clean copies."

Faziraloemin smiled behind his hand, "Yes, I know all about that sort of fad – they are so very charming while they last. But back to business. I know where this clock came from," he said, "and I know that no-one else in this drafty city possesses both the funds and the gall to risk offending the Duke by taking his special gift off your hands. There is no-one else that you can sell to, here."

"This is true," the younger man replied. "If I sell this unique member of a unique set, if I part with this high jewel of the clock-maker's art, if I release into the world an item of great sentimental value, in this particular city.

"I've had a yen for travel, of late."

The art dealer laughed. "Itchy feet, then? I had thought two years a long time for the pair of you to plant yourselves. But then, the old man was so ill... Need I remind you of the sheer ghastliness of travelling to and from Ocks without luxury-class transport? You are a scholar, Jonathon, one of the in-door set." He glanced out of the tall window, where a wind had set the high bridges swaying. "Hmmm."

"Nevertheless," said Jonathon, leaning back in his chair and slitting his eyes in a manner that he hoped gave the appearance of confidence and not just an attempt to cut back the glare. Faziraloemin laughed. "You are so charming sometimes. And your translation work has, indeed, been going well? I trust that you haven't been over-exerting yourself with your dramatic pursuits."

"Oh no," said Jonathon, "strictly translation and making fair copies of whatever half-rotten manuscripts someone finds and thinks might be interesting. One of the new jobs, though..."

"Yes?"

He cast about for a likely story. "Oh... someone's old diary. It had been dunked in murky water and the owner wanted me to have a try at it. Belonged to a body from the back country. Someplace called Morgan? His personal name would be Thom, or Thurban – I'm still working that one out. Interesting theories, the man had."

"Indeed," murmured Faziraloemin very quietly. He drank more coffee and considered Jonathon through half-lidded eyes. "I can give you two thousand now."

Jonathon half-choked. "That's arrant banditry. Ten."

"Three now, three in a handful of days."

"Ten."

"Three and four."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Oh, you can't wait ten days for the rest? My poor boy, if you had money troubles you should have come to me."

Jonathon found himself sweating. The glare in the room was giving him a headache, and every time Faziraloemin waved his fingers the light from the rings stabbed his eyes. "Eight, then..."

Too much time later, he sat alone in that high elegant room, finishing all the food that was on the table. He wasn't sure if the money was enough. He reopened his stack of bills to look them over again... and found that Faziraloemin had left him with the bill for the coffee.

 

**

 

Meanwhile, in a street by the Bank, in the half-drowned port city of Camuth, men with long poles moved along, lifting them to each glass globe of street light in turn and working the handles that set lumps of flint and flat plates of steel at the end against each other, sparking the light. The lights flared up, two by two, as the day faded and the crowd surged. Still, no-one really noticed a stout woman in a dark green dress, her hair and throat loosely wrapped about with a gaudy red scarf. By a tall dark house she stopped and put her hand to the lintel above the bronze door. She paused, listening, as the awkward tap of a heavy walking stick sounded from one of the side-alleys. Lifting on her toes, she fumbled more openly at the ledge while her thick black eyebrows furrowed in thought. Whatever she found there she put it in one deep pocket and sauntered back into the street, whistling an air from the Opera Polyphili's latest work.

 

**

 

“Come on,” said Matthew Quiller, “I'm starved.”

Rodomontadis, fellow student, just looked at him, her delicate hands folded cautiously on the cafe table. 

Why did shy people have to be so, well, awkward? (He didn’t mean Rodomontadis.) Scratching under his top-knot, his deft fingers resettling the feathers strung from it to dangle _a la mode_ in his red hair, he tried again. “Some test their eating establishments on the décor, the location, how often the cooks wash, but I have my own procedure which is far more efficaceous than these.”

Rodomontadis still said nothing. Irritating girl. (He didn’t mean that.) This close, he could see the careful darns in her sad-coloured sleeves, the wisps of hair that hadn’t settled from a recent haircut. (He’d liked it long. This was nice, too.) 

“I mean the sausages baked in pastry, of course,” Matthew said, brandishing one of the articles high for emphasis. This ubiquitous article has many subtleties: its size, the flakiness of the pastry, the recipe for the sausage – whether it is baked in the establishment or some bland, drab gristly stuff wholesaled from Tarrian's Meat Emporium – the spices used, butter or lard, the condiments, the arrangement of the eating utensils... I have every cafe, stall, and restaurant on Caramel Street mapped and graded by its sausages.” He finished his food and scattered the pastry flakes off his fingers. He noticed that Rodomontadis had supplied her own knife and fork for hers, wrapped in a white napkin. Even so, she only finished off a few bites. She didn't look up.

“Well, I... will see you tomorrow then,” said Matthew, looking at the crumbs.

“Dot!” Rodomontadis exclaimed, jewel-bright eyes showing at last.

There was a flare of warmth behind him. Matthew turned to see another dark-haired girl, of Rodomontadis' height, but in a smoothly-fitting, subtly gorgeous jacket, gently swirling skirts, and a great deal of rings on her fingers. She leaned over (she smelled gorgeous, too) and took Rodomontadis by the wrist. Looking Matthew up and down, her eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Hi,” Matthew croaked.

“Good evening,” she answered, low and mellow, her voice surprisingly deep. “My regrets, but I find it necessary to borrow your companion.”

“Not at all,” Matthew squeaked.

Then the two girls were gone.

 

**

 

In the mountains, all debts paid and home at last, in a little room buried in stone under stone, Jonathon finally let his shoulders sag. He lit his lamp – a linen cord laid in a saucer of oil – and let it sit behind its shade, taking off his spectacles for the night with a sigh and putting them in his coat pocket. He took off his coat and sat, legs crossed like a tailor on the padded mat that rested against one wall. This far inside the mountain he only needed his coat for a blanket; it was suffocation that carried off the occupants in hard times. To his good fortune he had never had much need of the lamps that would eat all his fresh air. He rubbed the back of his neck and thought about eating something more solid than sweets before he packed for his leave-taking in the morning. He was thinking, very strongly, about trimming the light when the door slammed open.

It was two members of the Duke of Ock's Own Alpiniers, their moustaches bristling ferociously and their quilted uniform jackets undoubtedly tortuously hot here. They swore as they squinted into the darkness and one of them left to bring a light from the corridor. As he did, Jonathon quietly took up his coat and boots. He could see the other Alpinier's head turning about the room like a blindworm's, trying to spy something in the dark. When he was looking the wrong way Jonathon sprang for the door. He took a chance: jigged right. It was wrong: the Alpinier coming with the light shouted and his friend dived back out of the room and caught him by the back of his shirt collar. Jonathon skidded on his stockinged feet and fell, wrenched back by his collar and choking. The Alpinier's hand, greasy with his own sweat, slipped from the collar and Jonathon fell the rest of the way to the stone floor, cracking his elbow – on the funny bone – as he did so. The other Alpinier reached them, almost trampling Jonathon with his heavy boots, but the scholar flared the cloth of his coat in the man's face. It blinded him only for a moment, but it knocked over the hall lamp, and the oil inside caught the flame and flared.

By this time, the other inhabitants of the cheap rooms here had come out to see the ruckus and, probably, make bets on it. When the flame grew so hot, they all assisted in dousing it, a crowd throwing soggy blankets on the fire before it became a danger to them all. Though he was bruised and trampled by the end of it, Jonathon managed to wriggle to a nearby grate of the ventilation tunnels. He'd had two years to explore them and could see in the dark. It was no trouble to follow his own trail signs away from there.

A few hours later, they assembled at the great staging port, a group of porters in shaggy coats and snow-goggles. The great wind was bitter. In the dark before dawn, just a hint of colour shading the sky, Jonathon stepped up to the gear rack and picked out his new second-hand fur coat and boots and goggles and shrugged into them with gratitude. He found his employer, a small fussy woman who had ten children, and liked books, and was a fine painter in line and ink-wash when she had the time, which she usually didn't. She fussed about him, making sure that his boots were properly laced and his pack, laden with specialist inks to be sold Down River, was not chafing on his shoulders (“It'll be too late to fix it when you're hanging from a rope halfway down...”). She was a kind woman, if a little overbearing, and Jonathon paid tribute to that kindness in memory in later days, though he never saw her again.

He stepped out into the dawn.

_End of Chapter Two._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of short, small-boned people in this story, and it's mostly because I, myself, am short, rebelling against the Tall Hegemony. (I'm not always deep.)


	3. Which Has Travel, But Mostly Deals With The People Of Camuth

The foot-trails round the mountains descend in leisurely winding turns to the plateau where most agree that the River Camber begins. It used to be rocky but over many years the people who lived there had removed the rocks and leveled the earth, using the excess material as the foundation and the thicker bottom half of the walls for a large and imposing trading post here, where the first and greatest tributary of the Camber surges from the ground in youthful, muscular strength. Jonathon Lily walked there with the other porters, limping a bit. It was still cold, this early in spring and so close to the mountains, for which he was grateful for he had an excuse to muffle himself in the bulk of his coat - getting through the halls of the City of Ocks in his underwear had been quite embarrassment enough, thank you, and he could do without little old ladies pointing at his shirtsleeves and the backside of his britches and chortling behind their hands. He kept his snow goggles on and walked through the high arched doorway into an echoing, crowded building hung inside with many flags of coloured stripes. Small birds feathered in red and brown infested the stone rafters of the building and cheeped at each other, though they might as well have been silent in the noise of Business turning over in its sleep. He found the particular booth that he had been looking for under a banner of blue and chartreuse green, where the factor leaned over a great book and a chequered counting board. He looked up, a thin, stoop-shouldered man with a broken nose and a wide mouth. "The shipment from Eln Habi, yes?"

Jonathon nodded and wearily undid the knotting of his heavy pack and eased it to the ground. He unlaced the flap to reveal, nestled in straw, a series of black lacquered boxes. He opened the first to reveal rows of tiny bottles nestled in dry moss. The factor plucked one out at random and looked at the dark green liquid with the light shining through it. He eased the cap open and inhaled the aroma, a smile growing on his lined features. His pale eyes glinted: "The beauty of bits of alpine bugses, yes?" Jonathon nodded.

"You haven't seen the girls with the batshit, have you?"

"They are a few minutes behind, sir, and have undertaken to be in the outdoor enclosure after they have partaken of refreshments. A 'hot noggin,' I believe."

The factor nodded. "Now for the rest." Soon they had all of the boxes on the table, opened, sorted, and inspected. Two stayed on the table and the rest went back in Jonathon's pack. "Remember to keep the purples and blues cold all the way to Camuth," the man instructed, "and don't hand anything over unless they have an appropriate bill – looks like this."

"Yes, sir."

"Here are your boat tickets and passes for the River Horse."

"Yes, sir."

"See the doctor in the surgery down the way. Her salve for snow-blindness is remarkable."

"Yes, sir."

"Aren't you hot?"

"No, sir."

 

**

 

Meanwhile, in Camuth, a student with small, neat hands and hair caught up in a feathery topknot slipped into a public dance hall that was crammed with people in fancy clothes, some expensive and some not, all talking too loudly over the orchestra. Resplendent in his new third-hand coat, forest green with two very hard to spot patches, Matthew evaded the strings of dancers winding around the rough wooden dance floor. He found, offset from the lounge, a small door lacquered with lowland flowers in twining wreaths. He swanned past the side-table, seizing a large platter loaded with pepper sausage and pungent cheese. Holding it with his best waiterly air he went through the private door into a short, dimly lit hall. His belly rumbled – the chowder hadn't lasted long. He popped some sausage in his mouth, and blinked away tears from the spiciness.

He opened the next door and saw, propped around a small table, people lounging in chairs as they played the tiles. It was pleasantly dark, if warm and, here, the well-dressed folk of the main lounge mixed comfortably with rigging-men and indigent scruffs in their camaraderie and passion for the game. One had her back to him, a young lady with a long braid of incongruously pale hair draped down her back. He noticed with alarm that, like some of the others at the table, she had shucked her quilted, high-waisted lady's jacket, and her only top covering was a white shirt and the braces that held up her dark, full skirt. She'd loosened the collar strings at the back and a flash of nearly-as-pale skin was showing, with shadows along the bumps of her spine. Um. He pulled his eyes away and balanced his tray precariously on a side table.

She leaned back in her chair and said "Sit." So he did, nibbled a little sausage, and watched her make a note with a stylus on a small wax tablet and then return to the click and clash of a hundred multi-coloured tiles in their fray on the table. He kicked his feet against the chair-legs. "They were asking for you on Caramel Street, Annalethe."

"Hn."

Matthew jigged in his seat then scrubbed his hands on his breeches, rubbing the palms and then the backs of his fingers on the rough woollen fabric, and tried again: "We’ve been missing you in class - Cam Dot’ri said something pointed about absentee aristocrats engaging in mind-destroying debauchery and, seeing as the rest dropped out of his class before the Winter Lows ...” She didn’t answer. “It's not that I mind having the extra space in the lab and all, but... there's a time limit on your thesis, y’know.”

She answered, husky and low, “I’m waiting on materials.”

“Your shipment of specialist inks was delayed, I hear. Something about the barge being stopped halfway down the river, in Falun. Bit of an unpleasantness with a warehouse on fire and a riot."

"Mmm." The young woman continued to observe the game, occasionally flipping a gaudy tile over or scooping several into a pile in front of her. Money was changing hands at the table but little of it seemed to be coming her way. Her pale brows furrowed and she hunched forward over the table, intent as a hawk on its prey. 

"You can work on something else, you know. Documentation or whatever."

"I know." Her eyes narrowed and she plucked a tile from the far edge of the table, flipped it, and brought it into one of her stacks. The other gamblers groaned and two small dots of colour appeared in her chalk-pale cheeks. Matthew sighed and snagged a stylus from the table, using the point to clean under his nails. The girl's pale eyes slid from the table to him. “What haven't you told me?” 

"I... well I think I saw Androby Hus'f drown in the canal. Just now."

Annalethe put the tile in her hand down with a click. It was at that time that the gambler next to Matthew, a bale-hauler from the docks by the looks of the pigtail draped over his shoulder, seized Matthew's wrist with a hard, blackened hand. “Do I know you?” asked the docker. At roughly the same time two stewards entered from the door behind them. One pointed at Matthew and they both started towards him.

Matthew froze, looking up, at the short, burly bale-hauler. “I don't think so, no, sorry.” He grinned sheepishly and dropped the little stylus. Annalethe rolled her eyes at the stewards and put one hand to the back of his neck. He flinched. “Would there be a point in asking what this is about?” She shifted her hand to his shoulder, hooked one foot armoured in a heavy boot around one chair leg, and used a combination of torque and an almighty heave to send him spinning backwards into the stewards while she sent her fist into the docker's face. He came back at her in an instant, but Matthew's flailing foot as he went over backwards got in the way. The stewards stumbled and half-caught him but, by then, Annalethe had retrieved a heavy, brightly painted staff from the floor under the table and was whirling it in a vicious arc at about head height. Everybody ducked.

The other gamblers had for the most part attended to scooping up their winnings, though many also reached for chairs and other improvised weapons. Matthew winced and heaved himself upright, catching the table with his shoulder and scattering both the tiles and most of the bets all across the room. Somebody snarled; another shouted; more stewards ran in and things got very noisy, very quickly. Many of the gamblers advanced on the young lady with red, angry faces. She spun her gaudy staff in a whining twisting whirr all around her, keeping everyone at bay. Her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes sparkled, patches of sweat breaking through the white linen of her shirt. 

“Annalethe!” he shouted, his face red and furious.

“Cover my back, Matthew,” she purred

“Aargh!”

Annalethe laughed wildly. “I’ll break the line - form up in a wedge behind me. For freedom!”

“Are you nuts?! What have you been drinking?”

“The tonic of victory!”

“All I did was borrow some food and crash the game without an invitation!”

“Oh.” She let her staff slow down, and finally stop, grounded next to her. “Is that all?” 

“Well... I might happen to have some spellsheets in my pocket. But it's not like any of 'em could jinx a game of tiles!” Matthew said indignantly.

Annalethe dug into a skirt pocket for a tiny but heavy leather bag. “Here. Make your peace with the management.”

Sometime later outside the dancing hall, now barred to the both of them for six months, Matthew and Annalethe stumped down the street, the young woman’s jacket still half-unbuttoned. One of the moons was out and high clumped-together clouds shone bright in front of the stars. Knots of singing people passed by at odd times, usually drunk, and usually singing popular tunes from the Opera Polyphili or grand old boating songs. Most of the canals were quiet, the boats tied up in their wharfs, but the odd little coracle sculled past. 

As they crossed a bridge over a canal, Matthew spat into it. “What got into you?”

She shrugged.

“I can’t believe they let you bring that bloody great stick inside.”

“Cripple,” she shot back, lifting up her foot bound in a heavy strapped boot for emphasis and then leaning heavily on her painted staff, her every gesture an iconic picture of weary pain for a moment, until she straightened and stumped angrily along again. 

“Ha. Decadent inbred aristo.”

“I suppose.”

“You bully people. Throw your weight around too much.”

She shrugged. “They expect me to be crazy.”

Matthew stopped and retied his topknot, winding the string of striped feathers around it so they fluttered in the light evening breeze. “’Crazy’ is not destiny. Show some responsibility for your own life.”

“Oh I do,” she breathed. “Now show me where it happened, eh?”

 

**

 

Elsewhere in the city, a man with hair like a debauched crow stood on a bridge over a canal, the water black in the darkness, and reeking as it usually did. He hefted a long heavy pole and dipped it serenely in the black water, probing slowly through the muck at the bottom. 

“Have you given thought to your immortal soul?” It was two missionaries from Outremer, clad mostly in bright feathers and wrappers of Inderland patterned cloth but tied in old styles. The woman was at least fifty by the lines on her face and her sagging breasts, but her hair was black as a raven wing, wound up inside a cap laced with tiny, dense feathers. The man seemed older, his tangled hair dropping from its feather topknot in greasy coils over his knobbly shoulders. 

“I am Shaa'a,” the woman said kindly, “and this is my brother in spirit Kalani. Some in this city prefer to call us by literal translations of our names, and so may you - as 'Feather-Cap' and 'He-Stands-Sturdily'. We have long travelled in this wild place, seeking to spread the word of salvation. May we converse with you on matters of a spiritual nature?”

He let the pole bump against the side of the canal, and turned towards them smiling. As he did, a hand grasped the pole and a stout woman with a red scarf wrapped strangling around her throat hauled herself out of the water.

Feather My Cap recoiled. “You!”

_End of Chapter Three._


	4. Which Deals With Ash, Mud, and Blood.

Annalethe knelt on the cobbles in the centre of the bridge, fastidiously twitching her skirts away from the puddle that looked black in the moonlight and lamplight. She dipped in her fingers and sniffed, cautiously. “Strong iron content,” she said thoughtfully, “doesn't pass light, dark pigment: might be blood. Might be a couple of other things.” 

“Don't lick it,” asked Matthew. She ignored him.

“Not much of it, either. If it is blood no-one died of its loss.”

“Look at the smear,” she said, “something was dragged.” 

Matthew peered over the bridge and then up at the high, dark buildings. A few sparks of light gleamed in the windows, through curtains and shutters. “Everything fetches up here. You've no way of knowing if Androby Hus'f was killed here and fell, or anywhere up stream. And for all we know she was strangled not cut, and maybe she just tripped and toppled in.”

Annalethe shook her head. “No. Clumsy she was not.”

Matthew shrugged non-committally. “She was creepy as all get out. Do you remember the jars of eyeballs?” 

Annalethe considered her fingertips again. “But she knew things. Many... things. I never saw a curse stick to her, either.” Her eyes flicked to the rail, where a patch of dank canal water darkened the wood.

Matthew laughed, a short nervous bark. “You were practicing on her?”

“I had to practice on something,” she said, her eyes glittering. She rose suddenly and seized her staff from where it rested. “There's nothing more to see here. I wonder where they took her body?” 

“I wonder who killed her. I mean,” clarified Matthew carefully, “which of the folk who hated her got there first?”

 

**

 

Jonathon lay in the mud and reeds by the river and blinked in the early dawn light. He could hear bugs chirping. He sat up and looked for his backpack, which wasn't anywhere in sight. Oh yes, now he remembered – he'd left it behind on the barge when they stopped at Falun and he went to talk to the folk running one of the larger, older warehouses: the Grimmer family. They'd been in mourning when he got there, and less than hospitable to visitors. Dropping Nicodemus's name had gotten him into the farewell party for the two eldest Grimmers though, a turn of events which was... interesting. 

It must have been an impressive party that he ended up out here. He certainly had a headache to show for it. Absent mindedly he searched for his spectacles before remembering that he hadn't managed to replace them yet, and looked around for the snow goggles instead. They weren't there. He put up a hand to shade his eyes from the brightening sun and realised muzzily that it was covered with ash and that stinging feeling on his forearm wasn't bug bites but the scorch of a burn. Ah. A _very_ impressive party. He staggered upright, sighted on the wooden buildings of the town of Falun, and headed slightly down river of that to find his barge the River Horse. The sun was very hot, and he'd lost his new coat; he could feel his skin starting to burn and tried plastering a bit of mud on it and on his hair for cooling, though it stung the burn on his forearm when he tried plastering that. It stung when he washed it off in a puddle, too, and when he tripped on a rock buried in an otherwise featureless landscape of reeds. 

He saw, amidst the graceful lateen-rigged ships and smaller dinghies, the great barge brought close to the bank, painted jade green, with rows of running horses along the side picked out in gilt paint. Well. What Inderlanders thought a horse looked like, at any rate, all attenuated legs and flowing whirlpool tails. There were folk swarming about, not only the riggers, passengers, and officers of the barge, but men and women with the golden sun of Falun plastered on their backs. He really didn't want to talk to anyone in this state, with his head pounding and his garb in such disarray. A trick from an old romance novel occurred to him and he plucked one of the reeds, squinted down one end to check it was hollow, and stuck one end in his mouth. Then he took it out again and held it awkwardly in one hand while he crawled through the reeds to water's edge. 

As he sighted water he spotted two small children sunk in the mud to their knees with woven reed bags slung over their shoulders, catching the fish that still slept in the mud at this time of year. They watched him with goggle eyes and their mouths open with horror as Jonathon, a figure of mud and muck, eeled through the reeds towards them and slithered into the river. He winked. One of them started to cry.

As it happened, breathing through a reed while walking through water was rather more difficult than he had imagined. His body kept wanting to float and, even though the water was fairly calm, it didn't take much of a wave to splash inside the open end and half drown him. Jonathon regretted his clever plan quite dearly before he reached the opposite side of the barge from shore and dared show his head again. Now he was almost sinking – maybe it was all the smelly water he'd swallowed. How long was it since he'd really _swum_ eh? He found one of the built in rungs on the steep wall that was the side of the boat, beside a 'horse's' goggle eyes and dainty nostrils, staggered upwards, and hauled himself over the edge, gasping. He shook himself like a dog in the hot, bright sun, and heard stern, official voices - he ducked behind a pile of rope, not feeling there was much point in doing all of this and still looking rumpled and disreputable in front of company. They went away after a time and he took off his boots and carried them as he padded quietly to the hatches that led below. The specialis inks he still carried – they had to be kept cold.

Jonathon found the hatch to the cold hold and descended it by virtue of lifting the cover and falling in head first. He observed the blocks of ice, neatly stacked and wrapped in straw, and found, at the end, the rack where he'd stored his pack. He checked – the slices of ice he'd inserted between the boxes were mushy but still deliciously cold. He sawed off new ice at the workbench and tucked them in, grinning with delight at getting something done so neatly. 

He was still tired, and the thought of soft, dry straw was remarkably enticing. He padded through the ice hold to the one next door, a bit warmer and packed with animal fodder. He curled up in a heap of it, turning over and around and hauling some on top of himself for warmth, and then sank back into sleep. He dreamed of telling Nicodemus all about this little adventure, and how he'd spin the words to make him laugh. It wasn't until half an hour after he had woken up, with fragrant straw tangling in his hair and getting up his nose, that he remembered that the old man was dead.

 

**

 

“This is ridiculous,” Annalethe said, her husky voice thick with scorn. They were still on the bridge, she and Matthew, and at either end were men in dark, rough clothing, their heads bound about with gauzy scarves and short staves in their hands like a chorus of singing banditti from the Opera Polyphili. 

“Uh,” said Matthew, “You guys do know who this is, right?” 

The man in front gestured silently with his black-gloved hand, beckoning.

“Matthew Quiller,” Annalethe said quietly, hefting her staff, “If I clear them at the southerly end, I believe you can run, not so?”

“Uh uh,” he replied nervously, “not going. Can't leave you behind – your dad would kill me, and so would half the dott'ri at the Academy. And my reputation on Caramel Street? I don't think so...” 

“Reputation is a bubble that drifts in the air splitting rainbows; it lingers not in the hand. What makes you think I am not a perfectly proficient swimmer?”

“What makes you think they aren't, either? And we're outnumbered, ten to two. Someone would follow us.”

“It is indeed a quandary,” she agreed. “Do you have any flashbangs?” 

Matthew shrugged his shoulders, “It's hard to get the sulphur, you know,” and flinched as the Opera Thugs moved forward, silently and smoothly as shadows. 

“Enough time for thinking,” Annalethe said. She stooped quickly and scooped up more of the liquid from the puddle. “Perhaps this isn't blood,” she said, “in which case...” In a few brief, elegant strokes, she sketched the lines of a twisting, elegant sigil on her own forehead. “I'd jump if I were you.”

Matthew shook his head, his lips white and pressed tight together. He drew his penknife from his pocket and opened it with shaking hands. “I shall have to endorse a complaint to your father,” he said, voice wobbling, “about the state of the municipal watch. He saw his friend stride limping forward into the crowd of black-garbed figures, and vanish, like a moon hidden by shadows.

_End of Chapter Four._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the first draft long enough ago that some of this is a genuine surprise to me.


	5. The Doctor in His Laboratory; Doings Outside Camuth.

Cam Dot'ri was a small, round little man inked with a delicate brush and coloured all the shades of biscuit. He puttered around his lab high in the Academy Of Occult and Technickal Arts randomly, like a little wooden ball bouncing off the walls of a table-sized maze, one of the games they used to make for children a few years ago. As he bounced back and forth and over his equipment, he muttered, a steady patter of words dripping into the ears of himself and his assistant. “Philoxanthes wrote that altering the polarity of the star iron fragments is only possible when Archer is in the House of the Blackened Smith and the tides are rising. Once the samples have transmogrified into monopoles then we do all sorts of interesting things with them, hm, m'dear? Slice them, dice them, run them in pretty little circles, even defenestrate the little buggers. But that's just dogma! We have the technology, and the wit, and the acumen to do more interesting things than that, and orthodox alchemick theory can, like the world serpent, curl in and commit improper sexual acts on itself.” He stopped, suddenly, highly apologetic, and said to his assistant, a small dark-haired girl with large jewel-bright eyes. “Sorry, m'dear.” She blushed, looked down at the floor, refrained from saying anything, and then went to find a brush and shovel.

“On with the purification!” The doctor plunked his equipment on his work table, and then stopped, curious as a small wad of cream-linen paper printed with lines, blocks, and blurred print fell out of his ancient text. “Hang on,” he said then, “the chemical requisition forms are really not supposed to be here.” He lifted it to the late afternoon sunlight coming through the windows and slanted it so that shadows fell across the fine threads of its surface. “As a point of scientific observation, I must be clear. Someone has not been writing on this. They have been writing on the page above it, with a fierce and forceful hand, that drove itself into its bed-mates. Fetch my pencil, Rodomontadis,” he said, “This is a kumquat of a different odour.”

He rubbed the pencil delicately across the indentations in the paper, and eyed it carefully, his lips moving as he sounded out the words traced in execrable handwriting. “O sweet philosophers of Larrieven,” he muttered. “This is... an interesting thing to have happen. But I fear I am being too verbose,” he told his assistant, “not to mention over-anxious, old-fashioned, and hysterical. I worry over nothing. Come, we need to finish our experiments - pop over here and dump in the accelerant. We'll see how things burn then.

 

**

 

There is a place outside Camuth where the smugglers come. Rather, there are several places, for those who find it best to bring their goods in by night also find it best to move around, cautious of the coast guard. _Here_ was a place of three shacks where the sand dunes clad in tussock softened and ran into a soggy mire of warm salt bog and biting insects. If one knew how not to sink, to the ankles or the knees, or the thighs, hips, shoulders, the mouth and the nose; if one knew also which of the slithers or the squabbling, stupid birds that lived in the reeds and wind-twined trees were good to eat, which of the salt-crust plants were useful in medicine or in building the haphazard, ramshackle curses favoured by the people who lived there... if one knew to avoid the feuds that every family maintained in pride, as an inherited treasure, that one might make a reasonable living. Few wanted to.

Of those that did, some lived in three houses perched on the shoulder of a sand dune. Rather, they lived in two houses, and the third was storage for a light, sturdy boat and various nets, and whatever crates and boxes might rest there for a night and a night, to vanish away elsewhere when convenient.

To be more precise: one person lived in the house to the left (currently absent). The other, ramshackle and grey, in general hosted a grandmother, her daughter, and whatever grandchildren, siblings, and in-laws might stay for a night and a night, to vanish away elsewhere when convenient.

Jonathon pulled his floppy hat more firmly over his forehead, and squinted once more in the glaring, horrible morning night. After the great barge River Horse had been stopped at Falun by the local militia and a handful of Alpiniers, he had continued his journey through more... unorthodox means, using the bulk of his pay from the courier job to buy passage on a smuggler's rig. He'd spent several uncomfortable days on a lateen-rigged deckless boat which smelled of fish and moved like a bird along the river, when it wasn't stopping dead in the water to acquire more fish and fresh-water oysters. He had kept his cargo buried in several small slabs of ice, under the piles of trout and molluscs, and lain sleepless at night worrying about its temperature. If this was smuggling, he considered, you could keep it.

The owner of the boat, a wiry, sober woman with ginger-and-grey braids wrapped around her head and brown wrinkled skin showing lesions from too much sun, had spat phlegmatically when he'd kept to himself under a tarpaulin during the day, and again when he proved himself unexpectedly apt at night fishing with the small floating lights set to bring in the fish. She hadn't blinked an eye when he'd asked to be dropped somewhere other than the public docks of Camuth, had heaved several bales of unidentified substances into the storage barn, and left him there. She hawked and spat, one more time, into the tawny yellow reeds where the bog edged into the river, and heaved her boat back into the water with a stolid grunt, setting about with the oars and catching the wind without ever looking back.

Jonathon walked to the door of the shack that had smoke curling from its chimney. He knocked.

_“Yerssh?”_

“Excuse me, may I come in?”

_“Yerssh?”_

“I am afraid that it is terribly urgent.”

_“Yerssh?”_

“Can you hear me?” he called, a little louder.

_“Yerssh?”_

He tried, gently, pulling the latch-string of the door, and it swung open, not creaking at all but silently, on well-greased hinges. There was a dark clutter inside, the overall visual effect like mold on a brightly painted toy, the garishness of it muted by grime and dark lines at the edges. Jars and gaudily fired pots sat on shelves lined against the walls, and lumps of blankets and other bits of bedding were piled in odd corners of the one room of the house, some of them on raised cots, out of any damp that might come crawling up from the bog. A wrinkled woman snored heavily on one of the raised beds, wheezing and croaking, small-boned but very fat. On her forehead, a thin black bird with a dab of canary yellow feathers at its throat perched and shifted its footing. _“Yerssh?”_ it called, _“Yerssh?”_ It turned its head and glared at Jonathon with a mad yellow eye holding a black pupil that was slowly being drowned in the milk of cataracts. _“Yerssh?”_ _“Yerssh?”_ As they watched, the bird pecked down swiftly at the old woman's head, a little red blood adorning its beak.

Jonathon clapped his hands savagely, and then waved his hat wildly through the air, but the bird did not move from its perch on the snoring, ancient lady. He could see where trails of black blood ran underneath its feet – a bird with talons that pierced the skin, and kept his distance. _“Yerssh?”_

He thought then of his visit to the Grimmer family in Falun, before the unpleasantness with the River Horse. It had not been like this at all, and yet the same. That family of dour, respectable merchants had been holding a festival at the time, with viol players and fire dancers, drummers and cloth streamers winding from lines strung from building to building in the family compound. “To change our luck,” the factor of that family had said, an earnest young man with glasses that made him look like an owl, as he took delivery of two boxes of the precious inks and passed on to Jonathon his delivery fee. “You must come to dinner,” he had said, and brought Jonathon out of doors, to the pits of hot coals where they baked mud-fishes marinaded in wine and wrapped in clay, and apples stuffed with diced jessamine and powder of ainsel, and the starchy, heavy root bundles of the barin reeds, all scorched and covered in soot on the outside. Jonathon had watched heavy-set, greying aunts and uncles of the house giggling and running through the grasses, and leaping the coal-pits barefoot, with their skirts lifted high or their shins bared, while their children dressed in formal brocade robes and _hmmphed_ and _harrumphed_ at the 'young larrikins' who 'should surely know better and would too soon.'

He'd seen, then, the two great chairs of sticks and rope set in a place of honour, set like thrones in the open field, and the ancient couple reclining there, with snub-nosed, sturdy faces, in high-collared robes embroidered with the peony flowers and the stellar sign of the Heart of Youth, with crowns of reeds and little white asters woven around their milk white heads. They had been seated so formally, and their arms and hands had gestured so gracefully and with direction, that it had been some time before he had realised that the both of them were fast asleep, and that children dressed all in black were manipulating their limbs like they would puppets. “The heads of the family,” his friend the factor had said. “Our great-grandmother Grimmer and our great-grandfather Grimmer.”

It had been a fascination to Jonathon how the factor, Piete, had explained how the two had been sleeping for months without ever mentioning that they might be either ill or not, perhaps, in their best faculties for business at this present point in time, and then had invited him to pay his respects to the stern and incisive heads of the family. Jonathon had doffed his hat, a red floppy cloth thing picked up second-hand along the way, and bowed deeply to them. “I am Jonathon,” he had said gravely, “and I believe my father knew you once, and counted the both of you as friends. May I be at your service as he would have been.”

“Who is your father, then,” had peeped a little voice behind the old woman, “that we may renew our acquaintance with the man who bred such a fine one as yourself. (Ow!,” the voice had muttered then, much quieter, “Stop that, Eric, she always talked like that!”) The old woman's hand had lifted then, in benediction, and the old man had nodded his head kindly.

“He was a doctor,” said Jonathon, then, “a scholar of ancient languages and mathematics and the courses of the stars, Nicodemus Dot'ri his name, who wandered ceaselessly through the ways and cities of Inderland and elsewhere. But he died, not long since. And I travel alone now, madam; Jonathon Lily is my name.”

The old woman's eyes had opened, then, dark and glistening in her round, snub-nosed face. She'd shouted then, in a hoarse voice that grew stronger as it went on, “I don't know you. I never plucked the lilies in darkness. I never knew the places of night! Go away!!” and the old man's arm had pulled out of the hands of his child minder and raised to strike Jonathon. He'd ducked his head, and guarded himself with an up-flung arm, feeling a peculiar horror at the feeling of the flabby flesh and the frail bone striking him as the old man's arm came down. He stumbled backwards, then, and fell, landing awkwardly on one side and bruising his shoulder.

“What did you do!” cried Piete, red colour coming into his face. “What did you do to my elder kin?”

“I-” said Jonathon, shaking his head, “I- I didn't do anything. I-” He scrambled to his feet awkwardly as behind Piete he saw Grandmother and Grandfather Grimmer stand on their tottering feet and spread their arms wide and scream.

And suddenly everyone around was running towards him, in the fire lit darkness, waving bright fire in torches in his face and kicking at him, bruising him, knocking him off his feet. “Villain!” they cried. “Murderer!” Buffeted off his feet again, he rolled down a slope, almost crushing a child dressed all in black, and looked up at the stake and rope thrones. The old woman wasn't there any more. He could see the silhouette of the old man, slumped half off his chair, his head sagging. “Thief!” he heard, “Bloodshed! Murder!” Jonathon shielded his eyes from the clashing light, half-sobbing, and stumbled out into the night. He was safe there.

And now he was here, trying to stare down an old and insolent black bird that bestrode a sleeping woman's head like it was the world, and it a conquering warlord, ready to peck out a particularly juicy bit of it.

This was ridiculous.

He addressed the bird: “Good morning,” he said gravely. “Please forgive my abrupt inclusion into these premises. It was very rude of me. Sir.” The bird mantled his wings abruptly, and turned his mad head around to look at Jonathon through the other eye, shifting from foot to foot, bobbed his beak downwards. _“Yerssh?”_

“I see my fault now,” Jonathon added, “and it is indeed a grievous one: I have not brought any gift of hospitality. I fear to admit myself as a wandering mendicant, not having passed any of the exams for such, and I know that there are dire penalties imposed by the convocations of same against gross and unskilled labour flooding the market. Yet I am in a quandary,” he added, edging closer to the bird and the woman whose stertorous breathing filled the room. “Yes, sir, a quandary. For I have no gift of hospitality to bring to this abode, save my own self.” He held out his hand and gestured to his heart, with all the studied grace he had learnt, those years ago when he had wanted to be an actor, or at least a playwright. “This is not, sir, as the goat said of the mountain built by ants, an obstacle unsurmountable.” Wary of the razor beak poised above the sleeping woman's eyes, he moved out his hand, slowly, so slowly, and turned it palm up. “Perhaps I could treat you to a finger? Or an eyeball, sir?”

The bird hopped again, flexing on its feet, so that the bob of yellow feathers under its chin jiggled and wobbled. “Oh, you are very stylish, sir, the envy of the young bucks about town,” Jonathon said, as he prepared to knock the bird well away from the sleeping woman. But before he could, it hopped and batted its wings, and leapt across onto Jonathon's fingers. He was struck by the softness of the inside of the bird's feet as it held itself there, balancing, with the faintest grasp of its claws for security. _“Yerssh?_ _Yerssh?”_

He sighed. Now what? _“Yerssh?_   _Yerssh?_   _Yerssh?”_

Jonathon edged back to the door and tried to throw it out and up into the glaringly bright air, but it clung tighter to his finger, painfully, and stayed there, mantling its wings and glaring at him with its milky, half-mad eyes. _“Yerssh?”_

He said something foul in Ancient Urub and edged back inside, holding the thing at arm's length. He found a cloth that was reasonably clean and, dipping it into a jar made of rings of alternating red and blue clay that held a few drops of water, he dabbed the woman's forehead, cleaning off the fresh red blood and the dried black tracks of the old. She had a lot of minor scratches and dents underneath – _“Yerssh?”_ \- but seemed otherwise unharmed. He pried open one eyelid, and then another, to check the size of the pupils of her eyes, and to check the health of the irises – _“Yerssh?”_ He laid light fingers on the trembling thread of her pulse points. _Yersh?_

“What are you doing?”

_End of Chapter Five_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long, I honestly don't know what Cam Dot'ri found. This is very exciting!


	6. In Which There Are Smugglers

In the house in the sand bogs, Jonathon turned to the door, to see the sharp end of a crossbow bolt directed at him. The point of the bolt was iron, with a patina of rust coating it - the crossbow that it rested in had a metal bow, similarly rusted, set in a weathered wooden stock. The cord creaked. The wielder of the crossbow, a barefoot, smock-clad, tow-headed little girl with chilly, pale eyes repeated her question. “What are you doing?” she asked imperiously.

Jonathon eased away slowly from the old woman. The black bird shifted its weight from one foot to another on his fist, fluttering and resettling its wings. “I came to this house seeking shelter,” Jonathon said carefully. “I found your grandmother here; she appeared to be ill. I was seeking to render assistance.”

“She's not my grandmother,” the little girl said.

“Nevertheless-”

“She's my aunt.”

“I would adore discussing the complexities of our respective family trees,” Jonathon said, “but perhaps another time would be best, say, when I am not in imminent danger of de-”

“You talk funny. What are you doing here.”

“I was seeking shelter, little miss, becau-”

“Don't call me little. It's a beautiful day. What do you need shelter for? Are you sick?”

“No,” said Jonathon succinctly.

“Then get.”

“Out? Away? Off?”

The bird called _Yersh?_ then, and leapt from his hand, in a flurry of feathers and beating black wings. Jonathon tensed then, for what he expected would be blinding pain when the bolt hit him, or possibly blinding pain followed by a bout of lingering, festering blood poisoning from the rusty metal, but the girl held her peace. The bird landed neatly on her shoulder and nibbled on her ear. “Get away, Fang,” she said, her eyes not shifting from her unexpected guest.

Another shadow came through the door, taller than the little girl, which revealed itself as a slender young woman with dark hair cut like a cap about her elegant head, in a dark and formal jacket, but with her faded skirt hitched up around mud-daubed knees. “Peace, Talitha,” she said drily, a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth.

“I can assure you,” said Jonathon Lily, “that my intentions are of the most benign, in every possible particular.”

“I am sure that they are,” the young woman said back, still smiling ever-so-slightly. “Talitha, point that thing somewhere else; you will hurt someone.”

Talitha rolled her eyes, whined “But Dot...” finally sighing and shifting her crossbow aside. As she did, the frayed cord of it snapped – _spung!_ \- and the bolt buried itself halfway through the wall behind Jonathon. He put a hand to the blood welling up from the new cut in his arm, and wondered if now would be a good time to faint. Almost certainly not, he concluded.

“Sit,” said Dot, as she knelt and sparked a flint against steel so that sparks scattered into a twist of dried grass in a tiny brazier. She fed them into a small but steady flame, and then sprinkled a scattering of soggy leaves and tree-bark on top that burned and gave off a thick, acrid, unpleasant smelling smoke, choking out the room. The sleeping old woman's snoring hesitated for a moment, and then resumed. The young woman sighed; the little girl swore.

“Perhaps you'd better go,” said the young woman. “We are a little distracted right now.”

Jonathon hesitated, looking out the door. “I'd... rather not go out in the daylight.”

“The storage shed, then," Dot said, with the equanimity of one who had heard this many times before. "There's a spare mattress up in the rafters. Keep your eyes and your fingertips to yourself, and all will be as sweet as honey. I'll bring up some grub later.”

Jonathon hefted up his pack with the stack of the last three boxes of inks in it, and rose to leave. “My situation is not, perhaps as you ascribe it. My eyes, you see, they are very sensitive. I see very clearly, but the daylight hurts them, and I have lost my dark glasses.”

Dot's smile grew. “And you came here to find them? You'll be wanting the Traveller's Aid, sir. And don't go in the other witch's house,” she said. “Androby's... cranky. She'll rip your guts out and use them for a skipping rope as soon as look at you.” She looked down at the old lady lying in front of her, still snoring and wheezing, and the tips of her smile sagged down again.

The storage shed stank of fish and salt, with an overtone of rotten eggs. There was a rowing boat set upside down on trestles, with a great hole stove in one side and very little paint, and piles of tangled nets, gaffs, and other fishing equipment. Up in the shadows of the rafters, just above the door where someone coming in would be less likely to look, he could see a tangle of more gear and a rope hanging down, seemingly through simple messiness, that he could tug down and climb up. From his higher vantage, he could see that a sturdy platform had been built here, and the tangle of gear camouflage, like a crab that collected debris on its shell. There was a pallet laid out there, and a folded blanket, and even a pillow. 

He checked inside his pack and found the specialist inks were still cool to the touch. He re-wrapped their box in a soggy bit of burlap and dropped it in a barrel of water in the corner. The box bounced out with a splash, and on investigation he found a lead case stocked with a few lumps of soggy ice hidden under the surface of the water. He shrugged, tucked the box inside, and then climbed back to his little eyrie to recline his head against the pillow and ponder. Sleep caught him with its black blanket.

He awoke to the sound of rough male voices talking below him: “... warned us it'ud be late”

“Mmm. My buyers aren't so understanding. Where's the shipment, then?”

Jonathon spied two men in the rough smocks and trousers of sailors, rooting through the litter inside the shed. One of them cursed, and opened the shutter of a dark lantern. In time, the two men found the sacks they were looking for, and heaved them on their wide shoulders. They stumped out the door, then, and shut it behind them. Jonathon waited awhile then jumped from the rafters, landing lightly as a cat, or a hunting ferret, albeit one that has landed on a loose, skittery bit of sliding metal that rattles resoundingly in the dark hush, and froze, waiting for a moment. Nothing happened, and he relaxed. It was time to go.

He padded out the shed door, and beheld the vista of the sand-bog, a place of undulating hillocks broken by tufts of grass made silver by the full of the moon. He could hear the shushing of surf, and the clicks and whistles and buzzing of the inhabitants of the marsh. He fished into the water-barrel, dipping his hands and arms into the cool, black-ink water to lift the lid of the ice-safe, and gently lifted out his precious box of inks. It was then that someone caught him a cracking blow on the side of his head. 

He'd been moving away which robbed the blow of some power - but he was still groggy and dizzy from it, and, to be brutally honest, less than fair game for the men, who beat him senseless efficiently, though without undue malice. 

When he woke up he was lying crumpled up in the bottom of a small boat with his face smushed into the reed mat laid over the bilge. At least one pair of boots was resting on his back; the smugglers were talking:

“...Society does not love a rotting corpse, Baern. Consider: when you have taken a place in the stalls of the Opera Polyphili, or it may be, the dress circle or the boxes if some fine lady has run mad and taken you as her escort, clothing you in fine velvets and, prior to that, soaping you and lathering you in her bathtub, and perfuming your hair with scented oils, so that the stewards of said Opera do not mistake you for said decomposing corpus -”

“Whit?”

“The decomposing corpus, Baern.”

“Oh, right, Born, I wiz not listening propurly.”

“As I said, Baern, when you are in the justly famous halls of the Opera Polyphili, at the anagnorisis perhaps, when the protagonist discovers that the dastardly knave dead before him, that he has just slaughtered, is in actual fact his demi-brother who had been stolen away by the dread pigmies of the far south, raised in solitude to become the greatest, and evilest, huntsman in the world and sent, tragically, to murder him for dark and dire reasons known only to the person who sent him, a vile man with a peculiar physical deformity, when the protagonist discovers that he has done this terrible thing, yet before he goes mad from the shame of it, still, observing the body of this dastardly knavish beloved demi-brother, do we, the audience, get to see the clotting blood, or the birds pecking at his tender green eyes, or even (if this scene is a very prolonged one), the maggots dripping from his nose?”

“Well no, Born.”

“My point exactly. Society does not love-”

“It's too far away to see a maggot, Born, 'cause we ben standing in the audience with the fine lady whit has smelly soap.”

“But my point is-”

“Maybe they could do one o' those biggen mashed paper maggots, a real snorter, and then, and then they could jiggle it around on wires ('cause I know they use wires, I ain't no fool, Born and that would be verisimilitude, you know, like truth-saying, even if 'twas too big, cause then we could see it was there.”

“Society does not want verisimilitude, Baern! Truth is a rotting corpse that is tucked behind the curtain. What society wants is something embalmed and brushed with rare cosmetics so that it looks pretty and tear-inducing, but only in that pleasantly melancholy way!”

“So we sink the body in the bog, then, Born?”

“We sink the body in the bog, Baern.”

Jonathon prepared himself for a fight, though without much hope of victory.

About then he heard voices in the distance, and the insolent barking of city-bred dogs. “There they are!” he heard.

There was a confused moment, when he felt himself lifted by rough hands and dumped into the water of a sluggishly moving stream. The cold woke him rapidly, as did the splashes of several full sacks and his backpack following him. He thrashed about, and finally caught the woven strap of his own luggage, and got turned around in the water, felt the silty water go up his nose, hit bottom, pushed off with his feet, and finally found air again, whereupon he sneezed.

He stayed mostly underwater for a while, and then clambered up and out into the salt-marshes, under a sky scattered with stars. The smugglers were deft in this environment, familiar with it and sure of their way in the winding water-tracks of the bog, though Jonathon could just about track them, zipping away in their unladen boat. The men of the coast watch, however, splashed and snarled through the muck, sometimes tripping on tangles of roots that they could not see. Jonathon picked his way along with care, keeping his head down and hoping that he did not encounter sucking mud or something that would consider him edible.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump, and her turned to see a spectre all in black, half melted into the background. _Yersh?_ It was the girl, Dot, with a black mantle thrown over her clothes and a black gauze scarf wrapped around her face. The bird was clinging to her shoulder – the only brightness the dab of yellow at its throat. “I'll lead you,” she whispered, and took his hand to guide him through.

“Born and Baern are... pragmatic,” she said. “Try not to hold it against them.” She stood on her toes, then and wiped a streak of mud off his cheek. He caught her hand, then, and kissed the knuckles of them. She smiled lightly, and pointed to the walls of the city. “There's your road.”

 

_End of Chapter Six_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That little blonde kid (and sometimes her grandmother) have turned up in a lot of my older stories. I don't mean to, she's just... there.
> 
> Talitha has a fairly complicated backstory in this story, but I don't think it ever becomes relevant.
> 
> **
> 
> Oh, hey, to any lurkers: comments are welcome, I mean it. Anything from "that was fun" to "can we get back to X already?" or "that action sequence was a bit confusing" etc. etc. This is a learning experience for me. (Or just lurk, that's cool too - I hope you're enjoying yourself.)


	7. Which Deals With Dwellings in Camuth

In the city of Camuth dwellings varied. The ruler of the city and the bulk of his family brooded in the Duke's Alta Fortress, a pile of stone heaped on stone set on one side of the river mouth to guard the harbour like a ferocious but dormant bulldog. Another fortress sat across from it on the other side, like a smaller dog watching the larger carefully, to keep its throat bitten out. Some of the financially and aristocratically enabled kept the Duke company, or at least their families did, and others lounged in estates that had tall trees and hedges in their gardens, to screen out the city. The great and respectable middle class of the city, people who dealt in the trade of cloth, paper, and the flow of mined gems, in the export of itchy-footed young people and the import of mild-faced visitors from over the sea, inhabited a large area of dour, respectable brick or stone houses of two and three stories high, generally in the heart of the city. The Opera Polyphili, though not truly respectable, lurked at the edge of this district, but its gaudy cardboard and tinsel dramas were more often patronised by the working classes, who situated themselves in a scattering of wooden shacks lining the great river and the canals around it, the paper mills and refineries and the docks, a population as shifting as the tides. The students that flocked about the hulks of the Duke's Benefice Library and the Academy of Occult and Technickal Arts lived in various places – in the attics of the more respectable houses, or at the homes of their parents (wherever they might be), in damp wooden shacks in the poorer districts, or the back rooms of the shops and restaurants and wine-sellers of Caramel Street where no-one truly got to sleep, though some went to bed often. Rumour had it that some slept in the higher, dustier rooms of the library itself where no-one would think to look for them. Annalethe kept a wooden house near the docks, where she could hear the white gulls crying.

Matthew presented himself at the front door about mid morning and knocked on it briskly. There was no reply which, unsurprisingly, disappointed him. He hadn't exactly been expecting an answer, not after what had happened last night, but... He sighed, and glanced around, trying not to look furtive. It was at that time of day when the people with jobs had left for work, and those who hadn't were still sleeping. There was one woman squatting in a chair on a veranda, wrapped in a bright blue shawl, who glared at him ferociously, but he suspected that she would do that anyway and he was prepared to insist that she was senile if ever challenged on the matter. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and ambled around the back to a tiny shared courtyard, ducked under some mouldering linen hung on a line, and had a thorough go at jimmying the back door with a pair of pliers. When that didn't work, he opened up his study kit, drizzled three drops of one vial into another, and then – carefully – squirted the product around the back door lock. The wood hissed and burned black. Matthew wrapped his fist in a cloth and punched out the blackened lock. He told himself firmly that the pain in his knuckles only made the success and satisfaction of punching out a lock more worthwhile. The door opened, creaking.

Stepping carefully on the bare and creaking wooden boards, Matthew looked around for greenery to water, on the grounds that he didn't exactly know when Annalethe would be back to tend to them herself, but found only some spiky, dessicated plants in pots ensconced on the windowsills and on shelves. They didn't look like they needed watering. A good burial, possibly. Kitchen: half a crock of milk in the icebox, a bowl of eggs, another of fruit (mouldy), bread, bacon hanging in a meat locker. A heavy frying pan full of grease on a little free-standing stove. Bedroom: a pallet on the floor, closet holding dark skirts and jackets like she'd worn last night, dresser with various linens (he shut the drawers to that quickly), a vase of dead and withered irises. Study: battered desk, half-empty bookshelf, one cup of fine, cracked porcelain on the windowsill, a blackboard mounted on the wall with smears of chalk and half-erased signs still on it – odd. He was bending down over the desk (no chair) to pull out a sheaf of dusty and much-written over papers for sorting when he was startled by a brisk knocking at the front door.

Jumping nimbly to his feet, Matthew wembled his way to the front door and unsnapped and twisted the various locks and chains that kept the outside world away from Annalethe's house. He swung it open, grinning broadly... and saw a young man before him, sandy-haired, tall and big-boned and a little plump, with a strip of black gauze tied across his eyes like the bravos who'd kidnapped Annalethe. He pressed a stack of three lacquered boxes into Matthew's hands and said, “Be sure to keep the blues and purples cold,” and then toppled towards him. 

 

**

 

Jonathon dreamed, and knew he was dreaming. He knew that he was standing on one of the horns of the palace in the City of Ocks, with the night wind tugging at him and pulling at this heart. He knew that he was standing there, in the observatory, with his father Nicodemus and the young Duke of Ocks. He knew that one of them was dead but he could not, for the life of him, remember which one.

Erasmus, Duke of Ocks, tall, thin, frenetic, spread his arms wide and let the bone-aching wind blow his robes out like great wings. “The bitterest nights are the finest,” he cried, black eyes glittering, black hair whipping about his face. 

Nicodemus Dot'ri, buried in layers of lush fur and a knitted hat that tied under his chin, snorted through his nose. “Save the drama for your courtiers, boy,” he said, rather loudly, and hunched over his brass telescope, adjusting it carefully by turning wheels and tweaking levers. Finally he stood back, and gestured for the Duke to look, not through the eye-piece set half-way down the telescope, but up into the sky. “Observe, in the House of Agon, the Heart of the Scorpion. And that would be where, Jonathon?”

Still huddled in a lee with his arms wrapped around him, Jonathon answered, “Third from the top, the big red one.” The Duke glared at him, then looked up and held his gaze to scanning the sky.

“It's a star,” he said. “It shines steadily. They always do in my mountains. What of it?” 

“Soon, soon,” crooned Nicodemus, glancing between a small clock set nearby and a page of notes. “And... now?”

“Huh,” said the Duke. “It is winking at me. Disappearing and coming back.”

“Why, do you think?”

“I have no idea,” he said over the wind, with an edge to his voice.

“Look in the telescope.”

The Duke, tall and thin and tense as steel wire lifting a weight, stooped over the telescope and peered. “There's a rock there – dark, hard to spot. It's... just blocking the light of the star... Here, Johnny, see for yourself!” He grabbed Jonathon by the wrist and bade him take a turn, shivering, at the eyepiece of the telescope. “How did you know it would be there?”

“Excellent cartography, meticulous note-taking, and a very good clock.” Nicodemus patted the one beside him with a proprietal air. “I must thank you again for the loan, young sir. I follow the wandering stars and plot their courses They turn and twist about each other, if we but look to see them turn, and do you know why, young sir?”

“Not,” said the Duke of Ocks, “unless I have mis-marked the tenor of your last three weeks' lessons, through a miracle of 'them just liking each other.' “

“Correct.”

“And this is your chosen stage, act, and scene for revealing the true cause, dot'ri?”

“No, it is not,” answered Nicodemus. “I must confess that I have no idea. Their purpose and function eludes me, yet I can see what they do. I can plot their courses. I can predict, after a fashion, where they will be. They run steady in their paths as a finely manufactured clock. When they do not, then I know it is not... arbitrarily. There is a cause and a perturbation, and I look for it. That is how I found yon speck, ten years ago. And now I know it well enough to predict when it will graze the other stars.”

“And this is the culmination of three weeks of lessons?” the Duke said, his voice rising over the wind.

“Not so, young sir. Merely the vehicle. Consider your own house and the courtiers therein. Like stars in the night, they twist and turn about each other in predictable courses. When those courses change, I look for the cause.”

“Your meaning?”

“Clean your own house, young sir, there is a rat in it.”

The Duke brooded for several moments, eyes half shut. “I will think on what you say. But come inside now – I can see the both of you shivering.” 

Nicodemus shook his head. “There's more to see, more to see. Youngsters have time to fiddle away, not I...”

And then, in one of the sudden transitions of dreams, Jonathon was clinging to a rafter in the hold of the barge, watching members of the Falun Militia poke through the bales of hay with their spears and feeling the tickle in his nose as he tried to hold back the sneeze and wondering where he might have hidden his pack with the packages of ink that he'd been couriering. He saw two small wiry women in the furry hats of Ocksian Alpiniers come in and argue with them, waving arms. Then he saw his pack, hanging from a hook that was somehow in full sun, starting to steam. The pressure on his bladder was excruciating. He shifted, trying to ease the pressure without waking up or falling, and felt the beam shift under him as the barge swayed on top of a swell. As the Militia and Alpiniers argued beneath him and waved sharp weapons whose polished blades caught the light and hurt his eyes he began to slip, and then...

However horribly one has slept, it is always comforting to wake to the smell and the sizzle of bacon frying. It is less comforting to know that one's bladder needs to be emptied right now, though this is common, and even less so when the person owning the bladder in question has no idea where he is or, more importantly, where the chamber pot might be located. 

Jonathon's eyes snapped open. Then they snapped shut again as he covered them with his hands and cringed away from the afternoon light full on his face. “Whups!” he heard, and the sound of curtains being shut rapidly. It helped a little. He opened his eyes a crack and lowered his hands slightly, and took stock of the situation – he was lying on top of a pallet on the floor of a fairly sparse and depressingly furnished room. A smallish, buoyant figure with some sort of tuft on the top of its head stood silhouetted against the light from the windows.

“You'd be the ink shipment, I imagine,” it said, its voice high but with a timbre underneath that probably meant it was a he, though likely young.

“I'd imagine so,” Jonathon replied croakily. “Chamberpot?”

“Oh, right.” There was a certain amount of thumping around and delivery of another kind of liquid. Then, “There's trouble there, Shipment,” said the boy.

“It warmed up?!” exclaimed Jonathon, horrified. He took breath to expostulate exactly how he felt about this but the boy interrupted.

“Trouble is, I'm not the cholly that ordered three whole boxes of specialist ink, am I? And I don't know where she kept the cash to pay for it. And I don't know where she is right now, either.”

Jonathon's shoulders sagged, with relief or some other feeling. “Feed me, and I'm sure we can work it out somehow.”

_“Agh!_ The eggs and bacon!”

**Author's Note:**

> About two-thirds of this was written for a long-ago NaNoWriMo. I'll try to post once a week, as I edit the chapters, and then push on to a proper ending so my sister (beloved, beautiful sister) does not kill me from frustration.
> 
> Cheers.


End file.
